At midday on January 1, 1776, the atmosphere of the conflict abruptly lurched toward total war when Lord Dunmore torched Norfolk, Virginia. The fleet under his command pounded the town with cannonballs for seven hours, and the blackened ruins smoked for days. “Thus was destroyed,” wrote John Marshall, “the most populous and flourishing town in Virginia.”49 This conflagration banished any lingering traces of Anglophilia that Washington retained.
